Windows 2000 Hardware Requirements

In 1997, I installed beta 1 of what was then Windows NT 5.0 on my laptop and on a couple of low-end desktop computers, and I've been working with Windows 2000 (Win2K) ever since. However, Win2K's hardware requirements have changed significantly over the years. Microsoft doesn’t talk about these hardware requirements much because they are more substantial than NT's requirements. In fact, Microsoft very quietly changed the Win2K hardware requirements in the final stages of product development. From a marketing standpoint, it would be a blunder for Microsoft to advertise the extra costs of migrating to Win2K.

When it comes to hardware requirements, I like to clearly distinguish between minimum and recommended requirements. Minimum requirements are the absolute bare minimum you need to install the product—anything less, and the OS won't install. Recommended requirements are what you should follow to get more out of Win2K. (You can also consider optimal hardware requirements, but we won't discuss those here because it's an open-ended area with too many exceptions and variations).

The following table describes Microsoft’s minimum and recommended system requirements for Windows 2000 Professional (Win2K Pro), Windows 2000 Server (Win2K Server), and Win2K Advanced Server (Win2K AS). Microsoft discusses these requirements at its Web site.

	Win2K Pro	Win2K Server	Win2K AS
CPU	133MHz or faster Pentium-compatible	133MHz or faster Pentium-compatible	133MHz or faster Pentium-compatible
RAM	64MB recommended	128MB required 256MB recommended	128MB required 256MB recommended
Hard disk	650MB of free space	1GB of free space	1GB of free space

The following table lists my recommended minimum configurations for Win2K Pro, Win2K Server, and Win2K AS (I refer to these recommendations as realistic requirements). In my experience, these configurations will work better than Microsoft's minimum recommendations. Be aware that these system requirements are not optimal configurations.

	Win2K Pro	Win2K Server	Win2K AS
CPU	300MHz or faster Pentium-compatible	500MHz or faster Pentium-compatible	600MHz or faster Pentium-compatible
RAM	256MB	1GB	1GB
Hard disk	2GB of free space	4GB of free space	4GB of free space

Use these recommendations as guidelines and make adjustments based on your network configuration, hardware, applications, and network services. An organization with 500 users can get away with a 500MHz Pentium and 1GB of RAM to run Win2K Server and Active Directory (AD). However, if you're running Windows 2000 Datacenter Server (Datacenter), it won't be uncommon to have a system with at least eight CPUs and 8GB of RAM. Most people have been testing Win2K Server in lab environments or on their desktops. Once businesses start to use Win2K Server in production environments, they'll realize what a hardware hog Win2K is.

Win2K Pro and Win2K Server require at least 1GB of free disk space to install. I recommend at least 2GB of free space on a Win2K Pro machine (I like to copy the Win2K source files to each of my computers). With hard disk prices taking a nose dive, you can now easily buy a 30GB EIDE hard disk for as little as $150. As for RAM, a lot of people can get away with 128MB, but 256MB makes Win2K Pro much snappier. I don't want to focus on what you can get away with, but I'm currently running the release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Win2K Pro on a 75MHz Pentium with Microsoft Office 2000 and a SCSI scanner attached to it (yes, it's painfully slow.) So much for the minimum requirement of Pentium 133!

On servers, where your pagefile will be larger, you need more available hard disk space because of the larger amount of RAM. File servers will obviously require more disk space than domain controllers. On domain controllers, you need to estimate the size of AD. The following table lists the approximate size of the AD database that you can expect (these numbers are based on Compaq’s AD scalability tests).

Number of users	AD size
10,000	62.2MB
100,000	454MB
1,000,000	4.10GB
10,000,000	41.9GB
16,000,000	68.6GB

Based on your experiences, you can decide what level of hardware works best for you. If you're planning to migrate to Win2K, you should test system requirements in your particular environment, because no one knows your network configuration, services, and applications like you do. Nevertheless, budgeting for beefier hardware will be an important part of your migration plan.

End of Article

It is obvious that Microsoft's minimum and recommended hardware specification have always been on the low end. They want anyone and everyone to run their software no matter how unsuitable the platform. Also, I do not doubt that your personal recommendations for running Windows2000 will do the job. I would have to work for Microsoft if I had the budget to order one of your recommended servers to manage print request. I am going to work for a company starting out with 7 employees. Do I need a GB of memory for our file server? I would hope not. Instead of focusing on what your personal recommendation are how about pointing out the resources that are most important. For example if I am implementing a Corporate file server my disk storage capacity it going to be more important that having dual Pentium 500MHz processors at my disposal.

Del Smith February 29, 2000

I think everyone understands that minimum hardware requirements have more of a legal purpose than anything else; obviously, if the software doesn't run because the hardware is ridiculously inadequate, support can't be expected until that problem is fixed. The author's recommendations are more like what you would like to install on a new box in order to get the most out of W2K. I ran W2K RC2 on 512MB RAM until I got laid off, but it didn't run so much better than it does on my generic W95C box with 64MB. Less than that, I agree normally it would be better to stick with what's running now, but at 64MB W2K already runs better than anything else but linux. It's good to have recommendations from a credible source if you're in a corporate situation where saving $50 per box by skimping on hardware will inflate real costs vastly over the long run.

Tim Prince March 01, 2000

I think your recommended requirements for running Win2k had an overkill on the rocesso. I agree your reccommendations for RAM size and HDD space, since win2k is extremly taxing in these areas, however, speaking from experience, i find that win2k runs very well on a p2-233. I am very satisfied with win2k's performance on a 233 (w active desktop, 16 bit color, 4meg vcard) as opposed to the performance i get with win98 on a similar environment setup. Lastly, I think win2k's performance on a p75 desktop has clouded your judgement as to the recc. requirements. -:)

Sao March 01, 2000

Very realistic and practical article

Umesh Pherwani March 02, 2000

I have to disagree!!! I have been running Win2K on 2 different machines for about a year now. Thr first machine is a Celeron 333a with 64MB RAM 4.3GB HDD 4MB Video and it is not very slow at all. 2nd machine is a PIII 500 with 224MB RAM 2 8.4GB HDD's 16MB Video and it is alot faster than the 1st machine, but not so much faster that I think Win2k isn't meant to run on a machine like the 1st one! My 1st machine has never had a major problem with Win2K! My theory on this is that all you old Engineers who like to do things the old fashioned way are not meant to run Win2K! Win2K has been embraced by all of us young people in Generation X and Y, because we don't have a preconcieved notion of how it should be we deal with it the way it is!! The days of command prompts and DOS are OVER people!!! Deal with it!! Win2K is only the first of a whole new wave of Next Generation OS'. Hence the name NEXT GENERATION!!! Built for US the younger generations who will make this Industry what we want it to be!! All you old timers will be phased out very soon! Just like Win9x!!! We are the future of the Industry and we have what it takes to succeed!!! All you dinosaurs need to get with the times man!!! This is the new deal here!! If you won't change with the Industry, then the Industry will roll right over top of you, and it's about time you old fogies were held responsible for your persistant, yet inadequate ways!!!!!!!! Later

whitlodg March 03, 2000

Your suggested system requirements for Windows2000 are far beyond what is needed to run it. Windows2000 professional runs fine on a P166 with 128 meg of ram. Suggesting that a PII/300 with 256 meg is a minimum for Professional is absurd, do you own stock in Redhat? Windows2000 server runs fine on a PII/350 with 128 meg, how much load you put on it will of course increase that requirement but even this hardware will support a web site that receives tens of thousands of hits every day, or can support several concurrent Terminal Server connections.

Will Windows2000 run better with more ram? Absolutly. Does it require more than 128 meg? No. With 128 meg on Windows2000 pro I rarely excede 128 meg of memeory used even with several browser windows open, Outlook, Excel, Access, Outlook Express and Winamp.

Jack March 03, 2000

yes... yes.... yes....... It always seems to be the three requirements at work; YES you can upgrade the OS; YES we will give you more money to replace antiquated peripherials; "OH and by the way, in order to do the OS upgrade..... We need to upgrade the hardware or it will run slow....." NO! (that's what I hear at work all the time)

Mr Ahmad is telling us his recommended system(s) and I believe he's right. Unfortunately, until our company replaces somewhere in th neighborhood of 25 386/486 PC's and 200+ Pentiums ranging from 100's to 266's, W2K is out of the question. The remainder (about 250 PII's 300 Mhz or higher) still don't meet the RAM and/or HD requirements just for workstations.

I would rather support our near 500 user base just as we do now, some W3.11, more W95, most W98 and a few NT 4.0, rather than W2K on machines that can't handle the OS and the users software. So Billy Gates (and all you readers...) sadly i say: "SEE YA IN A YEAR OR TWO!"

Oh and by the way.... most of the 12 servers we have for all these people, They are P200's. Come to think of it, we may not be able to switch until 2005!

Pete McGrath March 05, 2000

Your recommended minimum configuration for W2K fits rather well with the anti-Windows 2000 sentiments. To say, that one would need 256MB memory for the Win2K Pro machine to have acceptable performance levels, is absurd to say the least. Having seen the W2K pro and Windows NT 4.0 workstation running on the same system, 233 MHz CPU and 128 MB memory, I'd argue with you any days. There's no performance difference between the two OSs on the same hardware. Boosting the memory to 256 MB would make NT 4.0 a lot snappier also, that's nothing new. What is new, that would anyone want to pay for it and is it supported by the hardware?
Depending on the size of the network, the role of the server, etc.., 1 GB memory can be an over kill even for the Windows 2000 server. It would be hard to justify for a small network, about 50 nodes, with average use. 256-512 MB memory seems a lot more reasonable than the 1 GB. The mid to large size networks are already using NT 4.0 servers, with the hardware recommended by you. For them there's no problem upgrading to Win2K, if they so desire.
Your recommended minimum hardware would provide excellent performance, for Win2K or NT 4.0, works better than MS's minimum recommendation. I even venture to say that a system with dual 1 GHz CPU and 4 GB memory would out perform your recommended system easily. The question is, do we really need that much hardware? The answer to that is the standard IT admin reply: "That depends..."

Otto March 06, 2000

I've been running Win2K pro on a 200Mhz MMX pentium Micron system with 128MB of ram and I have found that it runs BETTER then WinNT 4.0 did on the same box. I would say it is VERY reasonable to take a 200Mhz box and install Win2K Pro on it. Just make sure to have 128MB of ram. The same held true for WinNT 4.0.

Chris Edgar March 21, 2000

I think that your statement that Windows 2000 Professional requires a 300MHZ Processor, 256MB Ram and 2GB free space, is over the top. With a modicum of tuning I have several installations of Win2KPro running on 133 and 166 MHZ machines with 64 MB Ram and using ZDNet's benchmarking software, I have achieved performance advantages over NT4.0 Workstation of 20 to 33% - using the SAME hardware !! What were you doing to the O/S to get such poor performance ???

Allen Funnell May 23, 2000

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